[G4] Re: System profiler and PC-133 RAM => upgrading components

[Steve Goldstein]

My experience with upgrade cards is not good.  I installed an OWC Mercury accelerator (1.3 GHz) in my Quicksilver 2000 (800 MHz).  It went bad (heat?) in less than a year, but it took me a long time to figure out that it was the processor and not something else like memory or font corruption.  I was getting symptoms like strange font substitutions, seemingly at random, and in bright green colors.  Then, freezes, and HD corruptions.  MacSales sent me a replacement accelerator, and it worked fine for more than a year, but, then it was deja vu all over again, only this time I did not get the bizarre font corruptions to tip me off...well, not at first, anyway. But, it did corrupt my HD once again.  Also, I had installed a beefed-up video card, and that added more heat, and was adjacent to the heat sink of the accelerator's CPU.  So, the QS 2000 is back to its original state (original CPU and video card) and runs perfectly now. 

I also installed a SATA controller card and a 250 GB SATA HD, and they seem to run well with no problem.  Previously, I had installed a second HD right under the original HD, and I think that the two together generated too much heat for the cooling fans inside the box.  The SATA HD is mounted in the front of the box, away from the IDE/ATA drive.  So, heat is no issue.

Also, at some point, Apple's cheaply made main cooling fan went bad (made quite a racket as the fan hub which was press-fit onto the motor's rotor cracked, and the blades scraped up against the housing).  So, I replaced it with a fan mounted on ball bearings from Radio Shack.  A bit louder, perhaps, but it is beefier and sure does the job. 

I guess what I am trying to get across here is that a lot of heat is generated inside the Quicksilver case, big and roomy as it seems.  But, the cooling arrangement is less than adequate for add-on components, especially if they are, themselves heat generators.  Personally, I would never again add heat-generating mods to a Mac.  I now have an Intel core duo iMac, and it is not user-accessible inside, so I wouldn't even have that option, at least until the Apple warranty runs out and I learn how to crack the casing/shell (the first-generation G5 iMacs WERE user-accessible).

An interesting sidelight: I advertised the Quicksilver on the local craigslist pages, and immediately got two expressions of interest.  Both were bogus scammers (one called himself johnathan_doe!).  But, no legitimate hits!

--Steve

At 3:46 PM +0000 8/20/06, nagable at comcast.net wrote:
>I'd like to hear from others who got the Sonnet 1.8 GHz dual processor upgrade.  It required a firmware upgrade before installation, and for that you had to boot into OS 9.  Now I'm wondering if the firmware upgrade was only required on the older G4s (mine is Quicksilver 2002).